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The Personalizer works great. It has two setting, etch and mark. One is AC and one is DC, can't remember which. Etch will get you down into the steel, as much a 20 thousands, from what I have been told. The mark setting will either just put a black mark on the surface or blacken your etched mark. For stencils, you go to Ernie Grospitch. He will sell you a sheet of them with up to 14 stencils for around $45. Unless you try to burn them up, each stencil will last you for at least 25-30 knives and longer if your mark is pretty bold. I gave up on stamping my blades almost three years ago and went with etching. I never looked back.

All you need is the marker head 20-40$$, well pads and electrolyte ext but that's the cheap stuff. This setup will not save you much money over going with the personalizer but it's more powerful so it can make etch deeper and mark darker. It can be fine tuned and adjusted more so it can make cleaner marks. It can be used to revert rust back to steel or turn rust ( red rust) into black oxide, I do this on my old Beatty Cleavers I get on eBay. Can be used for tattoo guns ( if your into that ) or a number of other hand tools, makes D/C tools veritable speed by ( won't help with A/C tools). You can gold or silver plate things with it. Lots of useful stuff, the persanalizer is a great machine lots of people say so but this unit is made by a very reputable company. Can be fixed if ever needed to be ( don't know if the personalizer can be?)) and has a better warranty ( I think ?).
As for stencils you can just buy some photo sensitive silk screen material ( used for printing) and some developer ( like for photographs). , can get it were you find the silk. I have the one from etch-o and was disappointed as it's just what I described above but comes with a 150 watt light bulb, the silk it thiner then what you can get on you own too. Or you could just go to a silk screen shop and ask them to shoot it for you. A lot of times these tee-shirt shops are run by young kids who will just do it for $20 bucks or som pot if the boss is not around (:

All you need is the marker head 20-40$$, well pads and electrolyte ext but that's the cheap stuff. This setup will not save you much money over going with the personalizer but it's more powerful so it can make etch deeper and mark darker. It can be fine tuned and adjusted more so it can make cleaner marks. It can be used to revert rust back to steel or turn rust ( red rust) into black oxide, I do this on my old Beatty Cleavers I get on eBay. Can be used for tattoo guns ( if your into that ) or a number of other hand tools, makes D/C tools veritable speed by ( won't help with A/C tools). You can gold or silver plate things with it. Lots of useful stuff, the persanalizer is a great machine lots of people say so but this unit is made by a very reputable company. Can be fixed if ever needed to be ( don't know if the personalizer can be?)) and has a better warranty ( I think ?).
As for stencils you can just buy some photo sensitive silk screen material ( used for printing) and some developer ( like for photographs). , can get it were you find the silk. I have the one from etch-o and was disappointed as it's just what I described above but comes with a 150 watt light bulb, the silk it thiner then what you can get on you own too. Or you could just go to a silk screen shop and ask them to shoot it for you. A lot of times these tee-shirt shops are run by young kids who will just do it for $20 bucks or som pot if the boss is not around (: